Thread (1/?): For the data/PRA/Matthew Desmond nerds out there, a thread on how @ericayee_ and I got data for this story https://calmatters.org/housing/2020/08/californians-evicted-coronavirus-pandemic/?_gl=1*4fnfn6*_ga*NzM2MjI2MTgyLjE1NzM2MDYwNzk.

Evictions data in California is notoriously difficult to get. There is no centralized source for eviction data, beyond some lagged data the Judicial Council collects.

For the purposes of our story, we wanted to know who, where and how many people have been evicted during the pandemic. Unlawful detainer filings wouldn't be helpful--we needed the lockouts. So I started with PRA'ing the Riverside Sheriff's Department...

Riverside had been pursuing evictions well after shelter-in-place. To my surprise, when on a whim I asked for an eviction calendar, I received a response to my PRA relatively quickly--with names and former addresses of people who were evicted and the date the lockout happened.

An important note here: The Riverside Sheriff's Department should be COMMENDED for responding to this PRA with detailed documents in a timely fashion. Separate that from what you think of their eviction policy--their "records unit" was incredibly helpful.

Once we got the PDF from Riverside, we started cleaning and trying to remove commercial properties and evictions that were not carried out. We used some keywords (incs, LLCs, etc) and Erica looked at some county property records.

Once we got the Riverside data, we included it in our PRA to other sheriff departments, basically saying "hey look give us something like this." This worked for many departments, although it took weeks/months to get some records back.

Most of the records were in decent shape, but some were messy. Erica did a hell of a job cleaning/organizing. San Diego, Kern County and San Bernardino were also helpful, approachable in answering questions and relatively quick.

Now for the county sheriff departments that were slow to respond or haven't responded yet. I am currently waiting on a CD-ROM--yes, a CD-ROM--from the LA County Sheriff's department. We had to pay $285 for it.

Hopefully it comes with Encarta. I miss Encarta.

The LA County Sheriff's PRA unit says they are very understaffed, and for the most part I believe it.

Some other sheriff's departments that were especially difficult and for which we still haven't received data: Fresno, Sacramento

Finally, the morbid cherry on top of this that we're still digging into: We sent the names and last known addresses to the CA Health Department to see if anyone who was evicted had died since the virus hit. They responded back.

We got some hits, but social/online searching hasn't led to much yet. I did confirm a death in Kern County, but it sounded like it was unrelated to COVID so we didn't pursue, and it was late in the reporting process.

We hope to dig thru these matches more in the future, and maybe with some help from our friends. More on that later: there's more we can do with this data.